Posh Nosh Porn (fancy restaurant sharing)

We've got a cooking thread and I think we've established that restaurant experiences with lots of photos aren't universally interesting to all so I figured I'd create a thread where we can share our fine dining experiences and pretend to be pretentious food critics while we whine about foam and slate as a plate.

I'll copy the post I made about the Fat Duck into here shortly and I look forward to hearing about where others have been.

I approve - unfortunately I took no pictures, when I was at Noma.

I uh, went to a fancy place for a wedding a week ago. I don't remember the name of the place, but their dessert was yuck, something coconut flavoured, looked like mud. I also learned that someone who's never consumed alcohol should not try red wine as a stepping stone. My tongue still burns.

I must admit I was a little apprehensive about whether whipping out the camera would have me labelled as a pleb and escorted to the door hence I only took a couple of pics, and I just wanted to enjoy as much of the experience as possible. We had a great table overlooking the rest of the restaurant and up into the kitchen. The hard part was trying not to get too much information as dishes ahead of ours were bought out.

As promised the ordinal post from the "interesting" thread:

Last night we went for dinner:

I didn't want to be the person who spent more time taking photos of the food than eating it but I couldn't resist a few photos. If anyone is planning on going soon I'd recommend resisting the urge to take a peek, the element of surprise with some of them definitely adds to the experience.

The organisation and attention to detail was amazing, considering it only seats about 50 people there's not far off a 1:1 front of house to diner ratio. They noticed that my wife is left handed at some point and started to set her place accordingly and if you were alone at your table for any length of time someone would innocuously stop by your table for a chat so you weren't bored.

Needless to say, the food was incredible. In between the more famous, playful, dishes was food that was just stunning.

I am so incredibly envious. It is one of my dreams in life to go to the Fat Duck.

What kind of red wine? I'd recommend port, but I'm also crazy :)

Now I'm a little hungry for expensive stuff and I have a craving for goodie bags.

Ha, heck if I know. I just remember an incredibly strong bad taste... and being laughed at by the 'adults'.

That bad taste was probably the alcohol. You generally have to build a taste/tolerance for it.

I envy all of you so much. Sadly, all the really nice restaurants are pretty far away, and I have no one who would go there with me. And since I think only a shared experience is nice in this context, I will have to make this specific experience vicariously through you. Thanks !

Why ? Good port goes with anything, pretty much anytime.

Ooh, been waiting for a thread like this.

My blog Edesia Is Hungry is a recollection of my recent experiences dining out in London. All places offer vegetarian dishes for my wife, although I will (and do) eat just about anything. I'm off to Roganic in a few weeks and The Waterside Inn at the end of Feb so will report back then too.

Here are a selection of dishes from various restaurants.



White aspargus, pear and truffle at Hibiscus



Spherified peaches and cream, peach, peach soup, raspberry ripple ice cream at The Square



Meat Fruit at Dinner By Heston Blumenthal



Foie gras, cherry liquer soaked muscat grapes, ginger at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon



Cooked and raw vegetable tart at Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

GODDAMMIT people. I'm supposed to be working here, not drooling at my desk...

Well here's a question. What's the etiquette for tipping in a place like this? The fat duck adds an optional 12% service charge to the bill so we didn't leave anything extra. The service charge neatly covered the standard UK expectation for tipping and leaving £10 or something on the table didn't seem fitting under the circumstances. I'd also expect these guys to be on a pretty good whack and not reliant on tips.

it depends on the final cost of the meal but in high end places I usually leave it at whats added on to the bill, as they've already taken 300 or so quid off me. It was 17.5% at Hibiscus iirc, 40+ quid, so not guilt there. Lower priced places i will top up the plate with cash to equal 12-15% or so if I had a good time and they only charge 10%.

In American restaurants I typically add 20%, as I rarely eat with the party size for a minimum charge. That remains consistent whether the bill is 50$ or much more, and I generally only increase it when it's a really cheap restaurant and I would be leaving something ridiculously small as a tip or in the instance of exceptional service.

I don't expect other countries to mimic that system so if they include a charge already I just go with it; I've seen all kinds of things in nice restaurants. At that point I'm doing math in Euros and VAT and god knows what else, so we're all fortunate that anyone's getting paid anything.

I wish this had been called the "Foodie boner thread," but Posh Nosh Porn is definitely a close second as far as awesome thread titles.

All those photos of food I took but never posted online because I didn't want to be That Guy to finally have a purpose!

No, because "nosh" is a terrible, horrible word and Nellie is a terrible, horrible person for using it.

But 'scoff' wouldn't have scanned as well.

Come to think of it, "posh" isn't a whole lot better. Also a terrible thread. I give this thread title an F-.

This thread title comes a close first as to what best to call a thread of this type - yours is a a distant third. Votes for second is yet to be tallied.

Honestly, there's no pleasing some people.

"The substantially better than your average local restaurant cuisine porn" is a terrible thread title. Why do you hate freedom?

When I was in fourth grade, we each had to design a business and make a poster for it. Mine was a restaurant called "Little Vittles". My fourth grade teacher wouldn't let me use it because she said "vittles" was short for "victuals", and not proper English.

Here ends the reading.

Fair enough.

Yes, it's short for victuals. And it was used by fucking Dickens for chrissakes.

The idea of Noma both interests and terrifies me. Interests because well, it's so highly regarded. Terrifies me because it's Scandanavian basics, mixed with soil and moss.

Oh hell, I'm sure I'll try it soon. Overall, the food in Copenhagen is quite good, so if this really stands out, it's probably worth the insane bill.

Well, the moss is a green, so why not and the 'soil' isn't really soil. I had some of those dishes when I went and yes, it's worth it - like he describes it was lige being in the middle of an edible magic show, you never knew what they would bring and even the things that looked like food you kinda knew, would surprise you with their taste.
We was there for an entire night (including a fire alarm which had them break out their very best champagne to placate their not all all angry guests who just enjoyed standing around looking at the harbour) - everybody including my very hard to impress big brother (he's had the sommelier from El Bulli work with him in his restaurant and have eaten at French Laundry, El Bulli and a lot of the other big places) left feeling very happy, very full and like we'd had a once in a lifetime experience.

It was also my dad's last birthday party before his death, which is why are trying to land a table for next year on my parents 50th anniversary.

Here's a picture of the 2010 tasting menu from my brothers restaurant - with snacks and palate cleansers it was really 15 servings, but my notes on those are in Danish.

Unfortunately I took no pictures.

Wait...your brother has a restaurant? Let me know the name; I'll go there next time I'm in Copenhagen (probably summer).

Oh man, I wish I'd taken pictures at Victoria and Albert's but I never do. The only one I have is this one:



Not pictured is the engagement ring that was in the middle of the rose and it's kind of hard to see, but the rose is sitting in a glass slipper.

This is the place where when we go to Disney we specifically save up to eat there because it is SO GOOD. And get the wine pairings. I don't even like wine, and I usually love what they give me. On the off chance I don't, Bahimiron and I usually end up switching whatever we have. And it is glorious.

I'll have to take some pictures of the personalized menus they give you each time. I LOVE them.

You'd have to drive almost three hours due north, then. His restaurant is in the small(ish) Swedish town of Växjö but has been named Sweden's best culinary experience two years in a row now by their most prestigious guide.

(one of the restaurants he led in Oslo, Norway, got a Michelin star based on his menu, just after he left, but that guide only covers the capitols in Scandinavia so his curent place isn't in the running)

New York restaurants look down upon the likes of Nellie and his photographic shenanigans!

Which reminds me, although I lost the pictures I took of the Inn at Little Washington, I do still have the menus,which I shall post later on.

Those assholes need to shut the fuck up. Diners are basically giving them free marketing and exposure and they're too caught up in being massive pricks to appreciate it.

Because I love it when the person at the next table stands on their fucking chair and blinds me with their flash while I'm paying $200 for a meal! Fuck that person and I support any restaurant that tosses people out on their asses who ruin the experience for everyone else! How about you let the owners of the business handle the marketing for themselves and stop acting like you're doing them a favour.

People standing on their chairs in restaurants should be thrown out no matter the reason why, because standing on your chair in a restaurant for any reason is something stupid people do.

I'm talking about people who discretely take photographs of their food. But go ahead, assume the worst case scenario in order to try and make your point.

So hey! I actually found a backup of my old photos, and I actually found the (pretty bad) pictures from when I went to The Inn at Little Washington, which is in Washington, Virginia.

Here's the menu:





If I recall correctly, I had the fire and ice first course, the foie gras for the second course, and the the rabbit for the third, mainly because I can never resist having rabbit if it's on the menu.

Aside from the courses, they also had a sampling of little amuse bouches that were fantastic, particularly the little tiny ham on country biscuits:

The cold foie gras, which I really wasn't a huge fan of (texture!)

and the hot, which was much more pleasant:

And for dessert, they had a mini sampler of all their other desserts:

As you can imagine, since I can still remember this meal in mostly vivid detail 8 years later, it was a pretty dang good one. :) I do wish the pictures were better, but heck I didn't even have a smartphone back then!

New York restaurants are also fucking expensive and not very good.

TROOOOOOLL! In the dungeon!

Seeing as I live in New York and have eaten at many of its restaurants, I can assure you that I'm not trolling. Indeed, although the statement is hyperbolic, it is only mildly so. I believe it comes down to the fact that 1) rent is incredibly high so restaurants need to overcharge to break even and 2) getting good, fresh ingredients into New York is a logistical nightmare. On point 2 I must tip my hat to Hot Doug himself, who once told me that, for that reason, he could not fathom trying to run a restaurant in NYC.

Food in NY is definitely expensive, but seeing as I have eaten a number of the best meals of my life there, I'd strongly disagree that they aren't very good.

I find "Pepper-Crusted Tuna Pretending to be a Filet Mignon" one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen on a menu. I am also dubious about any thing claiming to be Steak and Kidney "Pie" complete with quotes.

It was probably not actually served as a pie, it was probably transformed as something else. Same with the tuna, the turn of phrase is basically saying that it's tuna prepared as if it were a pepper-crusted filet mignon -- you know, playful and all that.

I can tell you that the food was incredibly delicious, and it's all sourced as locally as possible (obviously not something like tuna, though.)